This paper investigates the history and programme of the Chinese architectural journal Time + Architecture (Shidai Jianzhu). As one of the newly established architectural periodicals in post-Mao China, the journal was launched in 1984 by academics Luo Xiaowei, Wang Shaozhou and their colleagues at the Department of Architecture in Tongji University, Shanghai. The journal's close association with academic institutions and commercial design firms shaped its dual nature; that is, both scholarly and professional. At the turn of the millennium, the journal's substantial reform of editorial policy redefined its character from a ‘presenter’ of received materials to a ‘producer’ of selected collaborative work, and enabled it to maintain editorial distinctiveness in the Chinese architectural publishing scene.

This paper argues that Time + Architecture constructed a significant place for critical practice in contemporary China through the presentation of critical architecture and architectural criticism. Over the past few decades, the journal, under the editorship of Zhi Wenjun, published a number of special issues on the work of emerging independent architects such as Yung Ho Chang, Wang Shu, Liu Jiakun and others. The thematic topics, projects and criticisms presented by the journal exemplified an editorial agenda to publish innovative and exploratory work and demonstrated the editors' and contributors' collective endeavours to develop a critical discourse that confronted the dominant ideology of architecture.

This paper investigates the radical approach to architectural representation of Bernard Tschumi in the late 1970s and its relationship to the literary and visual practices of Dada and Surrealism. Focussing on Tschumi's Advertisements for Architecture and Manhattan Transcripts, the paper demonstrates how the critique of avant-garde tactics in Peter Bürger and Walter Benjamin applies to a broader understanding of politics in architecture and its efficacy.

‘The power of architecture (the potential of architecture) is integral to the spirit that orders the grouping of the elements that make up the house; – because architecture emanates, and does not clad; it is more an odour than a drapery, a state of aggregations, more than an enveloping surface.’ (Le Corbusier)

‘The fire is burning. Is it burning for me or against me? Will it give tangible shape to my dreams, or will it eat them up? I know pottery traditions going back thousands of years; all the potters’ tricks I know, I have used them all. But we have not yet reached the end. The spirit of the material has not yet been overcome.’

(Adolf Loos, ‘Pottery’)

According to the architectural theorist Charles Jencks, a major problem in architecture at this moment is the spiritual crisis, and the loss of a shared metaphysics. He believes that it is the task of architects to take responsibility for the public and esoteric meanings of a civic building, although this is an especially difficult task in a global culture where many believe there is no shared value system. Jencks is aware of the problem but at the same time he believes that a new paradigm in architecture is emerging. He describes this new paradigm as follows:

We have moved from a mechanistic view of the universe to one that is self-organising at all levels from the atom to the galaxy. Illuminated by the computer, this new worldview is paralleled by changes now occurring in architecture.

Jencks concedes that this shift in worldview is only beginning, that there is no widespread cultural movement under way, but one can discern the beginnings of a shift in architecture that relates to a profound transformation in science. Jencks is particularly interested in new sciences of complexity: fractals, nonlinear dynamics, self-organising systems, and the new cosmology. At the core of this new worldview is the new cosmology, ‘cosmogenesis’, which reveals the universe as a single, unfolding, creative event perpetually striving for new levels of self-organisation. Cosmogenesis tells us a new story of the universe and therefore Jencks perceives it as our new Genesis.

The expression of time is pervasive in Japanese culture and architecture. At the Chapel on Mount Rokko, Tadao Ando draws on native traditions to articulate a range of temporal phenomena.

The Hill House by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1902-04) is widely considered a seminal work of early modern architecture. Today, after more than a century of saturating Scottish weather, the house is crumbling from water damage and needing renovation. In 2019, the first stage of works to stabilise the house and rectify its damp walls began in radical fashion with the ’Hill House Box’ by London-based architects Carmody Groarke. Like an oversized architectural raincoat, this roof and chainmesh-walled structure completely encases the house, allowing it to dry out before conservation works can begin. The design also incorporates a series of walkways through the interstitial volume, enabling visitors to observe the old building from new vantage points during its renovation. As such, the enclosure not only forms a protective case, but effectively turns the building - and its conservation - into a museological exhibit.

The architectural interest of the Hill House Box, however, lies in its encounter with Mackintosh’s temporally and stylistically distinct design, and the perverse strategy of placing one building inside another. For this essay, the Hill House and its new box highlight the underexamined architecture of buildings-in-buildings and, in particular, the creation of spaces that are neither interior nor exterior, but both, simultaneously. Drawing upon a diverse array of buildings and texts, this paper will attempt to outline a theoretical framework through which such composite constructions might be better understood. In particular, it will argue that, while there are countless ways that buildings have historically become encased within other buildings, it is within museums and sites of preservation, like the Hill House Box, that these fantastic architectural encounters find their most exciting and emphatic expressions.

Oficinas saliteras (nitrate works) were company towns developed to extract and process nitrates in the Antofagasta region of Chile's Atacama desert, one of the world's harshest environments. The two last of these oficinas were María Elena (founded in 1925) and Pedro de Valdivia (1931), whose development marked the introduction of the Guggenheim industrial system. Their urban design was closely related to the industrial cities of Europe and the United States, as well as the Spanish urban tradition. María Elena used an octagonal street plan, while Pedro de Valdivia is based on a crossing pattern.

Le Corbusier – The Art of Architecture is the vague and loaded title given to a marvellous but somewhat random collection of Le Corbusier material that has been touring Europe, until recently housed in Lutyens' crypt in Liverpool Cathedral before landing in London this spring at the Barbican, where it feels at home in Brutalist surroundings. The exhibition has provided the inspiration for a festival of Le Corbusier events and talks, competitions and workshops across the country. The question, however, is why?

A founding member of the Computer-Aided Design Group at the University of Cambridge, UK, and a student and collaborator of CAD pioneer Steven A. Coons at MIT, Robin Forrest occupies an important place in the history of computational design. Along with important contributions to the mathematics of shape representation, his coining of the term ‘computational geometry’ in 1971 offered a handle on design techniques that started to emerge – somewhat uncomfortably at first – in the interstices of engineering, mathematics, and the fledgling field of computer science. Initially fostered by governmentsponsored research into Computer-Aided Design for aircraft and car manufacturing, the methods he helped develop have since been encoded in countless commercial software systems for 3D modelling and simulation, helping structure the intellectual work – and the professional identity – of architects, engineers, and other practitioners of design.

This article approaches three architectural facts, three works of architecture: three embassies designed by the same architect. They are the centre and horizon of the article and its goal is to make explicit the architectural processes, strategies, and decisions of conceiving and designing them. Therefore, this article gives words to things above all, while citing one or two insightful ideas from other authors. Its immanent verbs are to show and to reveal. Through dense descriptions and critical redrawings, this article seeks to prove that the creative design process of Guillermo Jullian de la Fuente is a continuous one, which can be seen through a deep examination of his buildings’ courtyards, the apparently empty residual useless spaces. The idea of courtyard is what gives purpose to Jullian's whole design process. Jullian's game is to decide their formal characteristics through a series of abstract matrices of lines and patches. In his design process, every step and every work is a possibility for evolution, variation, or disruption. There are no intellectual causes behind these foral studies but a set of creative decisions. This article also tries to show when and where those decisions occur. It seeks to contribute to the practice of design research.

A concise report about the landform, architectural, and detail design concepts for the recently completed modernisation of the Bishopsfield Housing Estate in Harlow, Essex. The objective was to develop proposals for new interventions which are directly based on, and give emphasis and new life in a contemporary way to the architectural and urban design conceptions of the original architects and town planner.

Alvar Aalto's Vuoksenniska Church (1958) has been widely discussed in architectural literature, often in general terms of plasticity or ambiguity. Yet previous studies have given relatively little consideration to the approximately 800 archived sketches and drawings for the project. When a limited number of Aalto's sketches for the church have appeared previously, an isolated sketch has often been used to illustrate a single aspect or element of the church, such as a notable lighting or acoustic detail. The church's complexity and spatial qualities make it well suited for more detailed study, using sketches and drawings to clarify the design process of the church and provide new insights. The most important sketches and drawings from the church's design process are presented and discussed in this paper. They illustrate how the design process began with simple sketches, in plan and section, for folding and moveable partitions, highlighting Aalto's priority for balancing religious and social activities in the church through divisible meeting spaces. Acoustical considerations were also combined in these earlier plans, while section sketches show how the church's skylight and unique clerestory windows were gradually developed through several iterations. The threefold repetition of elements in both plan and section was consistent throughout the design process. The structure of the church was designed with simple organic motifs like frogs and fish, but was also intentionally combined with other key elements. While previous studies have emphasised one aspect of the church or another, Aalto's sketches taken together offer a more holistic understanding. They show the interrelated nature of different elements in the church and the relative relationships between different sketches and ideas in the design process. As a work of architecture, the church's definitive qualities of architectural harmony and coherence are far more compelling than any one particular feature or notable detail.

In his essay of 1983, ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism’, Kenneth Frampton referred to the Bagsværd Church as a primary exemplar, briefly citing the architect's representation of ‘the Chinese pagoda roof’ in this project, to emphasise the importance of crosscultural inspiration in the creation of ‘critical regionalism’. Peter Myers followed Frampton in his 1993 ‘Une histoire inachevée’, arguing for the significant role that Chinese architecture played as a source for Utzon's Bagsværd Church design and further variations on the theme of Chinese and Japanese exemplars on Utzon's work follows. Françoise Fromonot established the importance of the 1925 edition of the Yingzao-fashi (State Building Standard, first published in 1103 ad) and Johannes Prip-Møller's 1937 Chinese Buddhist Monasteries for Utzon; Philip Drew pointed out the significance of the work of Chinese writer Lin Yutang (1895–1976) and historian Osvald Sirén (1879–1966) as important channels through which Utzon perceived East Asian art and architecture; while in 2002, Richard Weston suggested Das Japanische Wohnhaus (1935), written by Japanese architect Tetsuro Yoshida (1894–1956), as a formational influence in Utzon's early perception of Japanese building culture. However, none of these works attempt to clarify the precise role that Chinese and Japanese precedents play in Utzon's architectural career. Two more recent studies, by Philip Goad and Michael Asgaard Andersen, have confirmed the role of Chinese architecture in Utzon's church design and have introduced new evidence and details, but there are still unanswered questions about the exact nature of these influences. This article attempts to address the detailed process of Utzon's cross-cultural practices for his design of the Bagsværd Church in order to reveal how Utzon interpreted specific ideas, ideals, and artefacts from East Asian building culture.